Civil War Costume Leads a Man to Jesus

Picture of me leading Marcus to receive Christ in my Civil War garb! I did not know the picture was being taken.

A few weeks ago, I was asked to share a devotional at our weekly YWAM Salem staff meeting.  I decided to teach out of Colossians 3, in particular focusing on the whole idea of putting off the things of the flesh and putting on the things of the spirit.  To illustrate this, I decided to show up in my Civil War reinacting garb. The illustration did its job, and as I was getting ready to head out to a local university that we do outreach at on Tuesday afternoons, I thought to myself, "I am just gonna wear this on the university campus and see what happens."  The costume proved to be a great ice breaker. My "in" with people was asking them if they think my attire made sense in todays world.  All of them of course said no, which then led me to start from the basis of how do we make sense of a world where so many things seem"out of place"...like my costume.  The highlight of the day, was when a 24 year old man, with 2 kids who was a student stopped and talked with me.  Thirty minutes later, he surrendered his life to Jesus Christ.  The crazy thing about this story, is that a pastor friend of mine had literally been praying for this young man at the exact moment he gave his life to Jesus as he had been "trying church out" for a few weeks.  I have realized God works many times through two main things...desire and obedience.  If  you have the desire to see people come to know Jesus, and you obey the voice of the Lord to do it, then lives change...even if that means you wear a Civil War Costume.  Praise the Lord!